In the recent past communication networks have become increasingly complex. Data rates have increased from thousands of bits per second to many millions of bits per second. Along with these increases has come a substantial increase in the complexity of the network and the number of devices connected to the network. In many instances network architectures have been specified by one or more standards organization and implemented and or supplied by a number of different manufacturers. In many instances different management functions have or will be provided by different entities.
While the management programs often use the same information to implement their specific function, they invariably treat this information differently. For example, it is desirable to accumulate information about how many messages or frames over some unit of time are traversing a network and how many defective messages are detected as a percent of the total number in order to ascertain the health of the network. On the other hand some or all of this information along with additional information can be used by another management program to ascertain if the network is being fully utilized.
Since each of the management programs has different requirements with respect to the information, e.g., different time periods, ratios or resets, it would be necessary to provide a unique set of event counters for each of the management functions. Such a solution is not practical in those applications where a fairly large number of different management functions are needed as they would place a substantial burden on the implementing system.